Buttkisser Felon #1: “Mr. Wonderful, Terrific, Best-president-of-all-time President, the people will need reassurance that you have a plan for the coronavirus.”
Trump: “Oh, I have a plan. I’m going to tweet it. By the way, you’re fired for not worshipping me enough or being crooked enough.
BF #2: Oh glorious King Trump, I’m not sure that will do it. People might expect a bit more specificity about your marvelous plan. And by the way, it’s spelled c-o-r-o-n-a-v-i-r-u-s.
Trump: More speci – what? Oh, details? OK, I’ll give ’em details if that’s what they need. And by the way, you’re fired for correcting me. Here are the details.
BF #3: That was really super most holy Emperor Trump, but will people believe that global warming, which isn’t really happening, kill the virus — since it really isn’t happening?
Trump: If I say it’s global warming is not happening . . . where is that fool who brought a snowball into Congress, when I need him? Anyway, you’re fired for mentioning the global warming hoax. So here is my greatest idea in the history of ideas.
BF #4: That was a great idea President Cult Leader. This way if he fails, you’re clear and if he succeeds, you take the credit. Brilliant. May I get off my knees now?
Trump: But now that I’m on a roll, I feel I should keep on tweeting. It always seems to work with my dumb followers, who would support me even if I shot someone on 5th Avenue. And you’re fired for not kissing both cheeks.
BF #4: Before I go to jail, did I mention that Pence is spelled P-e-n-c-e? And predictably, he failed miserably, just like in Indiana.
BF #5. President Modest Stable Genius, everything seems to be falling apart. People are sick and dying. No help is coming from anywhere. You fired all the good people in the Health and Human Services Department, and now you are left with ignorant, incompetent buttkissers like me.
Trump: That’s just a rumor started by Romney who is jealous because I came up with the idea of screwing creditors by going bankrupt multiple times. He wishes he thought of it. Anyway, I’ll tweet this thing out of existence. And you’re fired for telling the truth. Didn’t you learn anything in my administration? No truth. My followers hate truth.
BF #6. Well, here we are Mr. Orange President-For-Life. The virus has killed a lot of people, but you’ll be glad to know that most of them are Democrats, gays, people of color, Muslims, people from shithole countries, the Indians you insulted because they served you vegetables you wouldn’t eat, the students from Trump University, your creditors, and all the women you cheated with. All gone. So bye.
Trump: Great. The plan is working. And you can’t quit; you’re fired because I’m a star and you wouldn’t let me grab your p*ssy.
Trump: From my golf courses, where I spend most of my time and I can charge the government outrageous fees, I tweeted the greatest plans, which were loved by everyone, including Vladimir Putin (who never helped me win the election and who hid the pee pee tape) and that little rocket man, Kim (whose love letter assured me he would not fire any more missiles).
But overrated Obama, nasty Pelosi, lightweight Sondland, weak Comey, Sleepy Joe, disgraced Vindman, Crazy Bernie, terrible Yates, nut job Pocahontas, crooked Hillary, loser Schumer, lying Bolton, dope Scaramucci, and that stupid whistleblower sabotaged my beautiful plans by telling the truth to the dumb, dopey, irrelevant, clueless, stupid, failed, fake, sad, dying, disgraced, phony, weak NY Times and the terrible, dishonest Washington Post.
Even suckup traitors to America like Barr (who I don’t know), Giuliani (who I never met), Graham (complete stranger), and McConnell (who?), jumped ship when the uneducated peasants, who were my base, came with pitchforks and lanterns.
And as for Melania, who wouldn’t sleep in the same room with me, I’m only sorry your replacements, who I already had groped, didn’t survive.
So there’s no one left but me, the greatest President in the history of America . . . no, the world . . . the universe.
Now, where is clown DJTJ, who I never will love as much as Ivanka (if she weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her)? I want to kick his butt for no reason. It would make everyone feel good.
The coronavirus is not just a medical crisis. It is a crisis of ignorance, a financial crisis that easily could be avoided if anyone in Washington had a brain.
Sadly, with a proven psychopathic leader, who has dismissed all the knowledgeable and experienced people who did not worship him sufficiently, and replaced them with brainless, corrupt sycophants, the likelihood of coronavirus morphing into full-blown economic crises is quite strong.
Here are excerpts from an excellent, THE WEEK Magazine article, that was written with more intelligence than exists in the entire, Trump administration:
How to fight a coronavirus recession
Jeff Spross, THE WEEK, February 27, 2020
At this point, the spreading COVID-19 coronavirus is not just a clear and present danger to American lives, but to our economy as well.
The major quarantines in China have curtailed both the country’s exports of goods and parts, as well as its imports from the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Other outbreaks of the virus are popping up around the globe, and U.S. officials are saying it’s all but certain to spread domestically as well.
But there are steps the U.S. government could take to protect the American economy from a recession, if they move as quickly as possible.
Specifically, the Federal Reserve should cut interest rates, and Congress and President Trump should put together a fiscal stimulus package to support the economy going forward.
There are four things history, both long and recent, should have taught us, they are:
To cause recessions, cut deficit spending, and to prevent and cure recessions increase deficit spending. Recessions are symptoms of money shortages.
Cutting interest rates does little to cure recessions. Cuts do not stimulate purchases enough to overcome the fact that low interest rates reduce the amount of interest money the federal government pumps into the economy.
The federal government has the unlimited ability to deficit spend. It never can run short of dollars, and never needs to levy taxes to fund spending.
Federal deficit spending does not cause inflations. All inflations and hyperinflations are caused by scarcity, usually shortages of food and/or energy (oil). To cure inflations, the government must cure the scarcities, which generally requires more, not less, deficit spending.
.
This graph demonstrates that insufficient deficit growth (blue line) leads to recessions (vertical gray bars), and those recessions are cured byincreases in deficit growth.
Almost half of U.S. companies that have business with China told a recent survey they expect to see revenue declines if things can’t return to normal by May — and one-fifth said they could lose half their revenue if COVID-19 isn’t contained by the end of August.
The Fed’s next meeting is not until mid-March. But to some degree, Fed officials could convince the financial markets to begin offering more credit right now simply by declaring unequivocally that they will cut at the next meeting.
This might be a good psychological step if it doesn’t convince Washington that nothing else is needed.
During the Obama administration, at the height of the “Great Recession,” rates were cut significantly, but fiscal stimulus was necessary to grow the economy.
The vertical gray bar is the “Great Recession.” The blue line is interest rates.
Here is a closeup of the graph showing how little effect interest rate cut had:
Rates were beginning to be cut in 2007. Yet, the recession began in 2008 and didn’t end until 2009.
The central bank’s recent cuts have been very modest adjustments of 0.25 percent each, and it should take the next meeting as an opportunity to do at least that much.
In fact, economist Kevin Warsh — a former Fed official, and usually a monetary policy hawk — has already called for the central bank to do just that. Financial analysts just told Politico they anticipate two rate cuts in April and June, and U.S. financial markets are already pricing in an 85 percent chance of a rate cut by mid-summer.
Yet even with financial markets anticipating rate cuts, the stock market has dropped like a stone.
The reason. Rate cuts have at best, a modest stimulative effect, and may even have a recessive effect.
Fiscal policy should also get in on the act. Obviously, the government should be making whatever public investments are necessary to respond to the virus directly: more resources for health responders to screen for symptoms, monitor the spread, and care for people who have become infected.
Congress is already debating spending packages of $4 billion to over $8 billion — and policymakers have blasted the Trump administration for a tepid response so far.
No one should be surprised at the “tepid response.” Remember, this is the administration that moved heaven and earth to eliminate ACA (Obamacare), not because it was bad but because it has Obama’s name attached to it.
This also is the administration that favors cuts to Social Security and Medicare, increases in the FICA tax, and is rabidly opposed to Medicare for All.
But we also need broader measures to support economic activity as a whole, and get more spending money out there.
A good example is the tax cut passed in response to the 2001 recession: President George W. Bush signed the tax cut in February, and by the end of April rebate checks were going out to Americans in the mail.
And that 2001 recession ended in the 4th quarter of 2001.
Another example is the temporary payroll tax cut that was part of the 2009 stimulus under President Obama. Federal payroll taxes bring in a colossal amount of money — roughly six percent of GDP each year — and reducing them or even eliminating them for a temporary period would leave that money in the economy for spending.
Indeed, since payroll taxes are automatically collected out of each paycheck, a halt to the tax would immediately put more money in Americans’ pockets.
If there were a clear head in Washington, the payroll tax (FICA) would be permanently eliminated in its entirety. (See Step 1. of the Ten Steps to Prosperity, below.)
Every single FICA dollar deducted from your paycheck and every single FICA dollar paid by your employer is destroyed upon receipt by the U.S. Treasury. They cease to exist in any money supply measure.
The reason is quite simple. The federal government (unlike state and local governments) is Monetarily Sovereign. It has the unlimited ability to create its own sovereign currency, the U.S. dollar. It never can run short of dollars.
Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.” Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.” St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e.,unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”
Even if the federal government collected $0 taxes, it could continue spending forever. It creates brand new dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a bill.
Now, there are real limits to what monetary and fiscal policy can do in a situation like this.
Both an interest rate cut and deficit spending are ways to increase aggregate spending.
But when a disease like the coronavirus shuts down economic activity, people can’t shop and spend money, and they also can’t go into work to produce the goods and services that other still-healthy populations are ready and willing to buy.
As dramatic as the stock market’s 10 percent nose-dive is, this effect on normal consumers and workers is the real threat to the economy.
If workers can’t man a factory because they have to stay home — or have been ordered to stay home — to avoid spreading a disease, no amount of money pumped into the economy can coax more production out of them.
This is also why a fiscal response to the coronavirus should focus on pure cash stimulus, since it will be hard to predict what specific areas of real-world work and production will and won’t be affected.
The author of the article is correct that a substantial pure-cash stimulus is necessary. Checks should go out to every man, woman, and child in America.
But he overstates the “can’t shop, can’t spend, can’t go to work,” claim.
At any given moment, even under the worst of circumstances, only a very small percentage of American people will be homebound. The vast majority of people who contract the disease, will recover in a few days and be forever immune.
And remember, Amazon.com, online grocery, restaurant delivery, and all the other on-line services available to the home-bound.
That said, many businesses will be hurt, so not only should the federal government provide dollars to consumers; it should provide dollars to the businesses most likely to suffer and most critical to the economy.
Tax cuts and rebates should go especially to industries supplying food and oil (to prevent the scarcities that cause inflations), health care, transportation, communication, and infrastructure.
Finally, we should think about longer-term policy changes that could help prevent future outbreaks.
I would begin with the Ten Steps to Prosperity
For instance, if the U.S. had a national paid sick leave system, employees would not feel nearly so much pressure to come into work when they’re ill or showing symptoms.
And guaranteeing affordable health care access for all Americans, such as with a Medicare-for-all program, would allow everyone to get treated as soon as possible when they think they might be sick, as opposed to forgoing a doctor visit entirely in order to avoid the costs.
And our failures to properly regulate market structures or enforce antitrust law have left us with highly-concentrated and monopolized global supply chains with little redundancy; we’re vulnerable to shortages and collapse if one key part goes down.
Good ideas. There is no reason not to plan and implement them — other than Washington ignorance.
Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow may have brushed off the need for stimulus, saying the outbreak isn’t likely to become an “economic tragedy.”
But when it comes to COVID-19, moving now with an aggressive emergency-style stimulus is the best way to ensure that prediction actually comes true.
We have written about Kudlow before, here, here, and here. I consider him to be at Trump-level in competence (i.e. incompetence). He is a Trump acolyte, whose knowledge of economics seeming can be purchased cheap. Either that or he truly is ignorant.
Finally, the title of this post is, “How you can help cure the coronavirus crisis.“ You can help by contacting to your Congresspeople and telling them what is in this post.
At first contact, you will receive a stock non-answer to which you should respond by trying again and again and again. Write letters interspersed with phone calls, Emails, and texts. And urge your friends and family to write, call and text. And urge them to do the same.
Pols respond to volume. A dozen contacts won’t do much, but ten thousand will make a dent.
This is an election year, when all Representatives and 1/3 of Senators are running, and are more responsive to constituents. Take advantage of it.
Ten contacts won’t do much. But ten thousand will make a huge dent. And follow up with letters and calls to your local newspaper, radio, and TV. Do a YouTube bit.
One young girl is making a dent regarding climate change.
Gap Psychology describes the common desire to distance oneself from those “below” in any socio-economic ranking, and to come nearer those “above.” The socio-economic distance is referred to as “The Gap.”
Wide Gaps negatively affect poverty, health and longevity, education, housing, law and crime, war, leadership, ownership, bigotry, supply and demand, taxation, GDP, international relations, scientific advancement, the environment, human motivation and well-being, and virtually every other issue in economics.
Implementation of Monetary Sovereignty and The Ten Steps To Prosperity can grow the economy and narrow the Gaps:
Apple News Insideapple.apple.com, Fri, Feb 28 at 9:02 AM: Even as health officials warn the spread of the virus is all but inevitable, developments suggest the U.S. is underprepared for the threat. Diagnostic kits sent to local health providers aren’t working, and the CDC’s testing criteria meant an infected patient in California wasn’t screened for the coronavirus for days. REUTERS
CNBC, Kevin Breuninger, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney on Friday, 2/28/20, suggested that Americans should ignore media reports about the coronavirus amid fears of the deadly disease spreading into the U.S.
FOX News: Pete Hegseth: It’s a shame Dems and media are using coronavirus to score political points. Democratic leadership has called out the administration for an “anemic” response to the outbreak, including accusing them of not requesting enough emergency funding. Hegseth. “Frankly, at this moment, the difference between $2 billion and $8 billion…what’s the difference in the face of this crisis?”
It takes only two things to keep people in chains: The ignorance of the oppressed and the treachery of their leaders.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Before you read yet another article about Medicare-for-All and the “Who Will Pay For It” question, please take some time to think about, and answer, just two questions:
Do you believe every American should have medical care, or should some Americans be forced to do without medical care?
If you believe every American, rich or poor, should have medical care, who will pay for it?
Peter Suderman, the features editor at Reason.com, writes regularly on health care, the federal budget, tech policy, and pop culture. He believes the government should not pay for health care.
I don’t know why; he never says. He is a libertarian, so he doesn’t like “big” government. Why? Again, he never says. How big is too big? Yet again, he never says.
But if the government doesn’t pay, all who’s left is you.
You pay if your company pays because your company figures the cost of health care insurance as being part of your salary.
You pay if your insurance company pays; it’s in your premiums.
You pay if the hospital emergency room pays because that forces the hospital to raise prices for all other services.
You pay if no one pays, and some Americans lack health care; their ill health means they can’t be productive contributors to the U.S. economy.
You pay if your city, county, or state pays for health care because these governments rely on your taxes to fund all their spending.
In short, there is no magic. You always have to pay, directly or indirectly. Except, there is magic. It’s the magic of Monetary Sovereignty.
The U.S. federal government is Monetarily Sovereign. About 240 years ago, the new U.S. government created the U.S. dollar — millions of them from thin air — simply by creating laws from thin air.
Alan Greenspan: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency.” Ben Bernanke: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.” St. Louis Federal Reserve: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e.,unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”
Since then it has continued to create laws and dollars, all from thin air. The very first dollars were not funded by taxes. They were created by laws.
And ever since then, the tax dollars you send to Washington, DC, willingly or grudgingly, still pay for nothing. Even if you don’t send a single tax dollar or even a tax penny to Washington, the U.S. federal government still could continue spending, endlessly.
So you, as a voter, have two choices:
You can continue to pay for your healthcare, either via direct payment from your checking account, or via indirect payment through your company’s insurance plan, or via indirect payment via higher hospital charges, or you can pay by being sick without care, or
The federal government can pay, and it would cost you nothing.
That’s it. Just two choices. There are no other options.
All those people who complain about the cost of Medicare-for-All really are telling you that you should pay, directly or indirectly.
Keep that in mind as you read the following excerpts:
How to pay for Medicare-for-All. Multiple estimates have found that the single-payer plan, which would eliminate virtually all private health insurance, would require more than $30 trillion in additional governmentspending over a decade, a historically unprecedented sum.
Additional federal government spending costs you nothing.The federal government already has spent more than $20 trillion dollars, and it has cost you nothing.
How do I know? Because the federal debt is more than $20 trillion dollars, and the federal debt represents federal spending you clearly have not paid for.
Further, the taxes you paid don’t even fund any federal spending. Unlike state and local taxes, federal tax dollars are destroyed upon receipt. (The federal government creates brand new dollars, ad hoc, every time it pays a recipient.)
And if an additional $30 trillion really is needed for healthcare, that means Americans currently are doing without $30 trillion worth of healthcare.That’s way too much sickness not being treated in this, the world’s wealthiest nation.
Bernie Sanders cited a a study “that just came out of Yale University, published in Lancet magazine, one of the prestigious medical journals in the world.”
The study purports to show that Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan would save $450 billion a year, and 68,000 lives.
A detailed article produced by Kaiser Health News and Politifact, however, (disagrees).
The Lancet study assumes, for example, that the Sanders plan could pay Medicare rates across the board.
Medicare rates are far lower than private insurance rates, and the hospital lobby is a powerful political force that has successfully fought off payment reductions in multiple venues.
Suderman ignores one simple fact: The “hospital lobby” has existed a long time, and Medicare exists — and “its rates are far lower than private insurance rates.” How did that happen?
Could it be that past left-wing Congresses were more caring and moral than today’s right-wing Senate?
Not that it really matters, for as we have said on numerous occasions, the federal government, being Monetarily Sovereign, can afford anything. In fact, the more the federal government deficit spends, the more economic growth dollars enter the private sector.
That is how economies grow.
The Lancet study Sanders cites also lowballs the likely increase in utilization that would come from eliminating copayments and other cost-sharing mechanisms, as Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan calls for.
Although it allows that the newly insured would use more care, it assumes that the currently insured would not seek to use more health services.
As Harvard health policy researcher Adrianna McIntyre points out, that’s deeply unrealistic.
Yes, utilization would increase, and that is a very good thing, indeed.
It is quite doubtful that people would make unnecessary visits to the doctor or hospital, just because they are free. So the additional utilization would benefit healthfulness. That is the whole idea: To improve America’s health.
There are other problems as well, most notably that the study simply doesn’t account for about $4 trillion in expected long-term care spending that would be part of the bill under Sanders’ Medicare-for-All plan.
Is this supposed to be a bug or a feature? The lack of long-term care, particularly for the elderly, is a real disgrace in America. Visualize yourself without long-term care insurance and having to choose between care at a facility, and no care, dying alone at home.
The heartlessness of Suderman’s position is truly stunning.
The study handwaves away research suggesting that its headline “lives saved” figure is substantially overstated.
Is 68,000 lives saved too high and estimate? Suderman never says what the “correct” number is. How about 50,000 saved lives? 40,000 saved lives? How many saved lives are too few for Suderman to be concerned about?
The question of how to pay for Medicare-for-All has come up quite frequently in the debates, and the repetition may even be having a substantial impact on the race.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.)struggled with the (payment) question. Her stumbles probably contributed to her declining position in the race, and she eventually left the field.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) released a complex financing scheme. This generated substantial criticism and helped demonstrate how she relies on a veneer of wonkiness to avoid tough questions.
Eventually, Warren released a second plan that called for a delayed implementation of full-fledged Medicare for All, which many (understandably) read as a sign that she wasn’t serious about the idea.
In both cases, we learned something essential about the candidates and how they respond to pressure: Harris didn’t have a firm initial grasp of the policy mechanics, and she flailed and flip-flopped in search of a politically palatable answer. Warren bandwagoned with the most progressive candidate, eventually releasing a dubious (but detailed) plan that suggested she wasn’t serious, then followed it with another one that undercut the first, all while pretending it didn’t.
The same is now true of Sanders. And his response, it appears, is to point to an obviously unsound study conducted by a sympathetic voice, and then lie about the rest of the existing research.
The Medicare for All financing question is not just a policy question. It is a test of character—and Sanders failed it.
No, Mr. (Libertarian) Peter Suderman, the Medicare-for-All is not just a test of character. It also is a test of economic knowledge, and you failed both tests.
You failed the test of character by giving the back of your hand to all the sick people who are or will, lead lives of misery or die early because they can’t afford proper care. You throw compassion to the wind, and prefer to talk about money.
And you failed the test of economic knowledge because you don’t understand the difference between federal financing vs. state and local government, business, and personal financing.
You also don’t understand the effect that illness has on America’s economic growth. (Perhaps the coronavirus will teach you.)
And while the Democrats may favor Medicare-for-all for compassionate and economic reasons, they too display a stunning ignorance of federal financing.
And that ignorance will kill a program the people of this nation so greatly need.
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 